Hello 2011…and February

After a little break from “Deep Blue” and XNA in general (due mostly in part to the fact that the “Upgrade” from XNA 3.1 to 4.0 was more painful than a root canal), things are rolling again.

I’ve been doing a good bit of tinkering with Unity3D, which seems to be much easier to pickup than XNA dev but at this point it wouldn’t make any sense to start over again. So…possibly in a sequel game :)

In response to my previous post (back in November) about the “Future of XNA”. It seems to be pretty secure for the time being (although it’s leaning heavily toward the Windows Phone 7 market…which has yet to do much of anything).

They moved the indie games tab BACK to the games section of the XBox 360 dashboard. Hopefully whoever suggested that it be moved next to the “avatar clothes” section was hopefully fired.

And believe it or not, Deep Blue is finally running in XNA 4.0. There are still a few minor details to work out, but I think I’ll spend more time optimizing code than picking up the last few pieces of the conversion.

I’ve also been taking a 14 week XNA workshop online for the past 3 weeks. Currently we’re covering a lot of 3d development, which is only marginally related to Deep Blue (being a 2d game), but it does have Connor recommending that the next Deep Blue game be in 3d.

Things are still expected to move a little slow as I get my XNA legs back under me. But the ball is rolling again.

Future of XNA…

A month or so ago the official XNA site, the Creators Club, got a new redesign. It re-launched 80% focused on Windows 7 Mobile development and about 20% XNA indie games.

Then, last week, the new Xbox dashboard launched. It appears indie games are no longer considered ‘games’. Microsoft has opted to file the XNA indie games under the ‘Specialty Shop’ category, along with Avatar clothes and Music downloads. As a result, (according to the community’s official sales numbers), purchases are down 50% and trial downloads are down 75%.

Soon, but still at an undefined time, Game Studio 4.0 will be released. The upgrades and changes to the Game Studio are also centered around Windows 7 mobile.

Torque, the only 3d engine that currently supports XNA has announced the next version of their TorqueX engine will be centered around Windows mobile development and that they “haven’t decided yet what their plans are for Game Studio 4.0 support”.

All these things have the XNA community up in arms, which has further effects.

Several of the better, more well-known developers/companies have officially stated they’re moving on from XNA to Steam or iPhone development. The shift in the sale figures simply isn’t worth the cost of development. This coming from the makers of “Beat Hazard” and other top 20 selling XNA games. *A funny side note…they’ve specifically said they WON’T be doing Windows7 mobile development.

Arkedo, makers of some of the most polished professional games in XNA “JUMP!”, “SWAP”, and “PIXEL” haven’t released a game for XNA in nearly a year. I think it’s pretty safe to say they’re done.

So, take out a lot of the best developers and best games on the platform…well…if you thought there were a lot of massage games, clocks and fireplaces in the past….just wait.

What effect does this have on “Deep Blue”? Well, since I started this project with no real hopes of actually LAUNCHING the game on XNA, much less making a lot of money with it…it’s not going to effect it at all with any luck. I’m far enough along that launching it shouldn’t be a problem, and even with dwindling sales figures I would hope to at least make my $99 investment for the creators club…oh…excuse me…Windows App Dev subscription cost back. With any luck…it will make enough for me to purchase a Unity license and take my C# knowledge there.

It’s just disappointing that it appears the future of such a great program, or at least concept, may be fading away.

Sprite Batch Optimizations

At this point of the process, with all the game play testing going on, I’m scanning the game for signs of things that make the frame rate hiccup. And at the same time I’m actually trying to break it with some of the test levels.

The good news is there’s just a few places where I’m seeing the frames skip a beat. So I headed over to the XNA….sorry…the “App Hub” boards and browse for optimization tips.

Turns out it’s best to keep a minimum number of sprite batch begin() and end() calls, as each one hits the performance a little. Good to know.

However, the bad news is, as far as I can tell. Certain things require new sprite batch calls to be executed and are unavoidable. Things like a change in the blend mode, or a pixel shader that uses a render to texture effect for an effect on the entire screen.

So, I spent some time last night scanning through all the draw statements and looking for ways to cut corners. I did catch one spot where I ended up drawing two copies of all the projectiles on top of themselves….which I wouldn’t recommend. And I think I caught one or two other places where I could merge a couple of sprite batches. But all-in-all, things were pretty tight.

I guess I’ll have to look somewhere else to untie my little performance knots.

Anyway….I just wanted to note. Since I misunderstood some earlier statements about sprite batches. Not only to you want to keep the number of sprite batches to a minimum, it’s ALSO the begin() and end() calls that slow things down a bit.

New Enemy Tests

I’m very pleased to say I’ve got the initial tests for a new enemy type in the game. It’s an enemy that turns the color of the water, making it virtually invisible. That is until you shot him at which point he “decloaks”.

This will make the “shotgun” firing mode much more effective/essential when facing levels with a lot of these creatures.

The cool thing is I was able to pull of the cloaking/decloaking effect with pixel shaders.

So far it’s turned out very well, hopefully I’ll be able to post some video soon.

Video Intro Test - *Check*

It’s a long weekend, Labor Day. And it’s been a pretty productive one.  You may even say I’ve been “on a roll” (I should probably find some wood to knock on).

Load/Save
I’ve created a custom data class for save game data and successfully saved the data with an initial “hit S to save” test. Obviously, not the final method but still…a good first test.

Video Playback
This one actually went a lot smoother than I’d ever imagined given the amount of steps and specifics of it. Anyhow, I created a test video several seconds long, exported it, imported into Deep Blue and even hooked up inputs for a smooth audio and video fade to black when the player ‘skips’ the video.

I think I’ll probably still have to tweek the code so it doesn’t stretch when going to alternate resolutions (right now it’s filling the screen by grabbing the dimensions of the viewport), but that shouldn’t cause any problems.

New Enemy Attack Effect
The storyline of Deep Blue has these gigantic jellyfish that are electrically charged. The warnings are that coming into contact with said jellyfish could potentially short out the MANTA.

So, now when the player’s ship hits a jellyfish the player loses the ability to control his ship for 5 seconds. This is indicated visually by the lights on the ship going out.

It seems to have worked out pretty well and definitely is a hazard for the player.

Play, Play, Play
The core game mechanics are all in now and (it seems) working properly. So now it’s time to play. Serious game play testing has begun time to see how people react, how the play feels and adjust the overall game attributes and see if there’s too little, or too much.

Marine Superpower Poll

Time for a quick poll. There are so many crazy abilities that deep sea creatures have...if you had a wish, which ability would you want?

Online Surveys & Market Research

Interpolation Success!

I’m VERY HAPPY to say, especially after this weekend’s problems that I seem to be getting the hang of this basic Interpolator class stuff.

It’s working like a charm for the logo and splash pages and really makes a big difference in the presentation. I never did have the intro screens working quite right and now things are looking pretty sharp.

It’s too late here to keep moving forward tonight so I’m off to bed, but hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to finish up the screen interpolations and hopefully start diving into the timer upgrade throughout the rest of the game.

On a minor note, I’ve also been chipping away at the new game art and UI.